04 October, 2015

This Week In Videogames – 04/10/2015

By
Kyle Shimmin

It’s a new week, with new happenings in the wonderful world
of videogames, here’s your regularly scheduled selection of stories that made
it through the filter of me! It’s a pretty dirty filter… filthy even.

More Like Call Of Crazy Am I Right?

Call of Duty: Black Ops III launched into a promotional
campaign on Twitter this week, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. They
reported on a fake riot in Singapore, going so far as to suggest the military had
declared martial law, established a quarantine zone, and were firing shots at
civilians to enforce both. The official @CallofDuty account was renamed ‘Current
Events Agg.’, with the description, “Where we bring you real news”, the handle
and website remained unchanged.I must admit, I found the whole affair to be the single most
interesting Black Ops III material yet, though naturally the consensus I saw
reached by people on Twitter and at press outlets, was that the campaign was in
poor taste to say the least. Understandable because some people missed the Call
of Duty handle entirely and took it to be a real unfolding event, I imagine the
blue verified account tick didn’t do them any favours.

It makes me wonder if they added the word ‘fiction’ into
that last Tweet, after the real-world outrage.

All About That Engine

“We are 100 percent in on [VR]. It's not a platform where,
today, you can go out and build a $100 million game like Gears of War. But it's
coming.”

And more specifically, their views on how to best facilitate
the development of VR experiences:

"In VR, the experience will be dramatically better,
being able to just reach out, grab objects, sculpt them and paint on surfaces,
the way a real painter or sculptor would do."

"It’s going to take a lot of advancement in the tools,
and before it’s really reached the sweet spot, it’s going to take advances in
the hardware, too… I look at that from the point of view of a game developer,
but I also look at it from the point of view of every architect or industrial
designer. They don’t want to work on some piece of graph paper and some
abstract coordinate system. They want to be in that space."

Unending Grudges

Can’t get enough of stout beardy Dwarves and burning
goblins? Well this narrated pre-alpha Total War: Warhammer let’s play may be exactly
what you’re yearning for. This is the first true gameplay footage – by which I
mean it features a HUD – that I have seen, and I can now confirm it looks just
like a Total War game! Which is a good thing as a fan of that series, still no
visuals on the campaign map as of yet and that’s what’s really keeping me
guessing.

Cry Havoc!

Microsoft, you know the people who make the Xbox, Windows
Phones – that I’m not convinced actually exist in the wild –, and Project Spark
– a natural choice – announced they acquired Havok this week. Previously owned
by Intel, Havok is a 3D physics engine used in countless games, for example; Destiny,
Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Microsoft revealed
their plans to integrate the technology into their existing cloud offerings, alongside
DirectX 12, and Microsoft Azure.

Conker Earns Another 10 Years Of Incarceration

Project Spark, I won’t rile its fans by saying no one cared
that it even existed; but from the outside looking in, that’s exactly how it
seemed. Clearly Microsoft understood it had issues, so come October 5th:

“Microsoft will pivot from producing DLC and active feature
development to encouraging more user generated content and opening
the Project Spark experience.”

Essentially Microsoft are cutting their losses and banging
out, hoping their absence will attract new players. This means that the
Conker’s Big Reunion episodic DLC is also canned, so even Conker himself has
failed to create a new game following his 10 year exile. What DLC has been
released will become free for all to use. A significant update accompanying the
transition will; double the maximum terrain piece limit, add more than 200 new
assets, and provide creators with 100 upload slots. Check out the full post on
Xbox Wire.

The Highly Secretive Project Codename: Kenshin

The PlayStation 4 got updated in some big ways this week to
version 3.00, let’s run down the list of changes. There’s now a PS Plus area,
accessible from the Home screen, allowing you to manage your membership and
download each month’s games. In terms of video sharing options, you can now
share 10 second clips to Twitter, and stream to Youtube. Friends can be
organised into groups, and you have the ability to send stickers in true
Facebook fashion. An Events hub has been added, the example given was a
time-limited in-game race event in Project Cars. There’s also Communities that
basically sound like Steam Groups, with message boards and screenshot sharing.
Speaking of screenshots, you can now save captured screenshots in .PNG format!
Here’s the official blog post.

All You Can Eat

Also on the PlayStation front, FREE GAMES! Subject to you being
a paying PlayStation Plus member… This month (European) subscribers can
download:

Broken Age (PS4 and PS Vita)

Super Meat Boy (PS4 and PS Vita)

Unmechanical Extended (PS4 and PS3)

Kickbeat (PS4 and PS3)

Kung Fu Rabbit (PS4 and PS3)

Chariot (PS3)

Servers Under Siege

See I would have done the opposite; get this garbage away
from potential consumers and delay by about three months… But no, Ubisoft extended
the Rainbow Six: Siege closed beta twice, meaning it now ends October 4th,
today. Improvements to the beta have been focused around matchmaking, which was
admittedly pretty rough when I tried to play, but it’s nowhere near the most
pressing issue the beta exposed. Check out our video coverage of the Xbox One
version; TDM Bomb and Terrohunt game modes to find out why I’m so negative on
this title. Rainbow Six: Siege is due to release December 1st, with 11 maps and
as we discovered last week, no single player.

I Need To Get Me Some Of That TERA

This week’s weird closer was bit of a toss-up between two
trailers representing games so far apart it practically makes my eyes ache to
see them on the same webpage. Up first we have my personal pick from the MMO
TERA, not a game I’ve kept up with, but that could well change after catching
this.

And courtesy of Matthew, we present this Just Dance 2016 ‘Gameplay
Preview’ of a song called Chiwawa. Yes, Ubisoft wrote the word ‘Kawaii!’ in the
video description. And yes, those are hotdogs being chased across the screen by
a Franken-dog.

So where do you fall on this heady issue? Into the Kawaii
kitten corner, or into the smouldering den of skimpy undies, or are you one of
those ‘cool’ kids with a poor taste in gaudy trailers? Let us know!